Kathleen Miller writes in the Examiner, Some day laborers bypass help:
Each day, about the same number of workers gather at convenience stores at University Boulevard and Piney Branch Road in Silver Spring as use a taxpayer-funded center run by immigrant advocacy group CASA of Maryland a half-block away.
Patrick Lacefield, spokesman for County Executive Ike Leggett, said the centers ”manage and regularize what had been a gathering that was impacting residential and commercial areas” and called the program a success.
“We can’t force people to use the center. Obviously lots of people are using the center of their own free will,” he said.
Manuel Rivera, a Silver Spring resident originally from El Salvador, said he went to the 7-Eleven instead of in the county-sanctioned center because of the church vans that he says deliver food to the workers in the store parking lot.
“I get breakfast here every day,” he said in Spanish.
Let’s repeat here: Patrick Lacefield says that the centers ”manage and regularize what had been a gathering that was impacting residential and commercial areas” (emphasis mine). How on Earth does this make any sense whatsoever? How can he use the words “had been” with anything approaching a straight face, when the entire point of the discussion is that these gatherings are still going on? With respect to the impact of solicitation activity on residential and commercial areas, in the context of the County’s cojones-free approach to this problem, all these centers do is create yet another place for solicitation to occur.
I suppose that the most remarkable thing about this quote is that anyone that high up in the County actually admits that these gatherings have any impact on residential or commercial areas whatsoever. Not that they appear to have any intention of actually addressing these problems. They could, for example, enact and enforce an anti-solicitation ordinance. Which, if the County was truly serious about protecting these vulnerable day laborers, would be an excellent way to help stop abusive employers from hiring in the County, while simultaneously providing relief to areas impacted by the solicitation activity. But the County would appear not to be interested in achieving this sort of balance.
